Given the massive scale of this 500 year old conspiracy that requires the involvement of millions of participants to keep the charade going (including military, international space agencies, physicists, engineers, pilots, marine navigators, professors, intellectuals, etc.) WHY has there never been a credible whistleblower exposing your claims? Where are there intellectuals with credibility that claim the world is flat? There is really NO WAY to contain a conspiracy as grand as this and the only people who propagate this nonsense are internet trolls. One paranoid schizophrenic who probably looks like a Bond movie villain claims that Steven Hawking knows about this (and laughs with his "credible intellectual" colleagues) yet chooses not to share this information with the rest of the blind masses. What insanity.
So, why has no one blown the lid on this? Given the huge number of scientists and professionals that would have first-hand knowledge that the world is flat, why exactly has not one of them released confidential documents on Wikileaks...now SURELY Julian Desange knows that the world is flat, right?! LOL.
Most of these people would not need to be involved. Each are acting in a compartmentalized fashion - they simply are working on their own part of the larger piece and would have to know nothing of the conspiracy at all.
For example, they built a spaceship, whether it went to the moon or not. So all the folks at Boeing or Lockheed would not need to be involved. Likewise it would be silly to include cafeteria workers, professors, intellectuals, and the engineers. They are all acting under the assumption that they are working on a piece of the puzzle and don't really look to getting more information than what they need to do their job well. They have no need, or want, to know about the "larger picture" except how it applies to them.
Only a few key players would end up needing to know the truth.
And they have blown the lid on this. Now you do say credible whistle blowers. What is the first thing you do to a whistle blower if you are the conspiracy?
Destroy his credibility in any way possible.
Under that same logic is it not possible to conclude that people believing in the flat earth theory are also restricted to compartmentalized knowledge. In other words, under what pretense is it accepted by those believing in the flat earth theory, that the evidence they have of the earth being flat, is of any better, or more genuine, quality than the evidence of a spherical earth?
There is a fair amount of compartmentalization in any field simply due to necessity. Here we are talking about the government, navy, and army - specifically these branches working with contractors and the outside world. Its a rule of work in this case to compartmentalize.
Your other question - how is our evidence more valid than theirs - can be answered easily. It is more valid because it embodies the mentality of Enlightenment. We are talking about self discovered truths through empiricism - not rotely believing an authority figure. As Orwell might put it - Do you think it is above our astronomers to construct a dual system?
Is it not beyond (bar any further measure) down to a basic choice of opinion? "I think this seems more credible, therefor I'm going to believe in this?" If we accept that both parties are under this compartmentalization of information, then it seems as though it defaults to a study of the volume and logical fidelity of the material on both sides. And in that case, wouldn't it be more rational to believe in the weight of evidence that the earth is spherical, due simply to sheer supporting volume and logical validity; without having to invoke grand conspiracy presumptions to prove the case?
The rational choice would be to examine the path less examined. As you said, the volume of evidence is abundant for the spherical earth. The flat earth is largely un-examined. Who knows what we might find? What ideas may come from the seeds of a flat earth? Even if incorrect we have historical evidence that often incorrect scientific ideas are later re-purposed.
When you say that the best way to discredit a whistle blower is to destroy their credibility. this is an accurate claim, but does that actually apply to any advocates of the flat earth hypothesis? Do we have any actual cases of credible people coming forwards with the idea, that are then publicly shamed and discredited vis.character assassination, defamation and so forth? I'll warn here that you can't use people disclaiming the invalidity of the claim that the earth is flat, as valid proof of this, because this claim is the one in question. My question here is where are the cases of what you mention happening?
Its showed up very often regarding moon hoaxers and whistleblowers in that respect. As far as the flat earth goes we can see B.o.B being attacked and discredited as well as Tila Tequila for standing up for the truth. Things like personal attacks against their former careers and education level.
It's ok to hypothesize about how some possible conspiracy might occur, but without evidence of it occurring, it's a presumption and not really a credible assertion to validity of the claim. There is an essential step in validating an assertion: Substantiation. So while I agree with your rhetoric, it doesn't establish the truth of what you're implying.
Could you do so?
We always deal with presumption. If you think anything else, you don't understand science. I would find it hard to establish the truth of any implications what-so-ever.
I agree though, it would be nice to get a smoking gun. I'm not a believer in the conspiracy. Mainly due to the fact that I'd rather believe that humans err over malice. This may not be the most well founded reason, but its one that has served me well over the years. If we had a smoking gun, then yes. However given how incompetent NASA is we can truly say that they were stupid enough to only take one picture of the earth while there, stupid enough to photoshop up images of the earth, stupid enough to fake the shape of the earth to appear more rounded than it actually is, silence and decredit moon hoax whistleblowers, etc.
On the other hand, they are ripping off Americans every day to illicitly fund their empire. They develop technologies funded by America such as memory foam bedding. Then they turn around and sell it to the private sector to gain more funding. Finally the end user of this technology has to pay for the development of said technology twice - once to the private sector and again in taxes that originally funded these endeavors. They are stealing funding from those that produce the true labor of this country and should be ashamed. IN addition, they skirt their responsibility to truth and reporting to the American public accurately almost every chance they get.
It is more valid because it embodies the mentality of Enlightenment. We are talking about self discovered truths through empiricism - not rotely believing an authority figure. As Orwell might put it - Do you think it is above our astronomers to construct a dual system?
I have a problem with this. If you're establishing validity as coming from self discovered truths through empiricism. You're also validating the evidence that underlies the spherical earth model. This is the basis of scientific discovery. Your claim is contradictory here. You're using the same principle to validate one claim, and invalidate the other. It can either validate both, or neither. So I can't take this as substantiation that material in support of the flat earth hypothesis has more credibility than the material supporting the spherical earth model. Based purely on you referencing the process through which that information is gathered. In so much as under your definition, those processes are identical (unless you're implying that the spherical earth model isn't based on empirical evidence?!), yet the outcome is not. There is a logical flaw here. Where is it? Can you attempt another justification of this rebutal?
As for the idea that scientific discovery is coming from an authority figure, this is kind of a straw man argument, or at least a warped truth. Science in it's self is observable by you or I, or anyone. Take basic trigonometry, the length of line C is the square route of a+b in a right angle triangle. This is an observable fact you or I can see and deduce from looking at a right angle triangle. The speed of light can be measured with a laser pointer, a detector, a long enough range and some timing equipment. This is an observable fact any of us can deduce for ourselves.
These principles are used to establish the distances to planets (distance=time divided by velocity). The distance traveled for the radio waves to bounce off Mercury and hit the receiver back on earth is T divided by C. where T is the time it takes and C is the speed of light (2.99792458 x10 to the power of 5). We know radio waves travel at the speed of light and also, from doing the experiment we get T (time it takes the radio waves to bounce off Mercury and get back to earth) as 1266.648 seconds.
So: 2.99792458 x 10⁵ x ⅓ (1266.648) = 1.8987x10⁸ km or, about 48 million miles.
The same can be done for any other planet, lets say Venus. It takes the reflection 12.6255 minutes to occur, so Venus is 141.115 million miles away. Again, these are simple premises being applied logically, and conclusion being drawn based on observation of the nature of how these applied measurements interact.
This is how we can measure the physical distance a planet 'must be' from earth. The only way this could be 'wrong' is if there is an error in the observation, or the calculation. There's no room for 'authority'. And when every measurement done by anyone that does it always comes back with the same figure. We can say that it must correlate to a physical property of the universe.
From that, we can use trigonometry to work out our distance from the sun. We take the distance between us and a planet like venus, find the position of it's orbit in the sky when at the point between anterograde and retrograde. We know from trigonometry that this is the point at which it's position relative to the sun and us is tangent to it's orbit vector. It 'has' to be, otherwise it wouldn't 'be' the point of greatest elongation. It's inescapable observable fact, me or you, or anyone can see.
What it 'means' is that we know 'for sure' that at that point, us, the
earth (oops) the
sun and venus are at a right angle. We then take the distance we have measured between us and venus where: (distance between Earth and Venus) = a × cos(e) and (distance between Venus and the Sun) = a × sin(e), Where 'e' is the angle between Venus and the sun at the point of greatest elongation and a*cos(e) is the distance between the Earth and Venus.
From this we can work out what 'a' is in the trigonometric equation (the distance from earth to the sun). The greatest elongation of Venus is about 46 degrees, so by this reasoning, the Sun-Venus distance is about 72% of the Sun-Earth distance.
If we know the absolute distance between Earth and Venus (which we have established), and that the Sun-Venus distance is 72% of the Earth Sun distance(which we have established). We can figure out what 100% of the Earth sun Distance is by using trigonometry. That number turns out to be: 9.2956×10⁷ or about 93 million miles. So now we know, for sure, that Earth is 93 million miles from the Sun. It isn't something we've been 'told to believe' by an authority figure. You can go out, by yourself, do the observations, run the experiments and come to the same figure. To argue against this is to claim that the literal bedrock of observation and actual logical deduction is some how 'being faked'. It's a straw man argument.
Science is based on observation and derived through maths (logic in written form) and rational deduction. We come to the conclusions that planets are certain distances away, and certain diameters by coming to conclusions based on deriving basic laws from simple observations and extrapolating them onto more complex systems. You can do this, anyone can. You can't "control" that. And when these calculations are performed an indefinite number of times, and continuously portray the same results. We can say that they apply to reality.
Could you explain to me in which part of this, such a fundamentally deep "hood wink" can occur? Between the observer and the observed.
-edit - typo